Some revolutions start slower than others. This revolution played at
45rpm.

On the CHUM chart for the week of December 2, 1963 was a new song that
didn’t debut at number one.

It didn‘t even make the Top Ten. Or the Top Twenty. Or even the Top Forty.

But there it was at number 42. Out of 50 songs. Not exactly an auspicious
start. The following week, the song climbed to number 20 and became the
CHUMdinger (the fastest rising record of the week).

For the CHUM chart dated December 16th, its momentum had slowed somewhat
as it only climbed five positions to number 15. But on the CHUM chart
issued on December 23, it leaped into the Top Ten at number 5, where it
remained for the following week (December 30th), the final CHUM chart of
1963.

Then came 1964. For the first CHUM chart of the New Year (January 6th),
the song had only climbed two spots to number 3 with “Dominique” from
Sister Sourire, aka the Singing Nun at number 2 and “Louie Louie” by
The Kingsmen sitting at number 1. The following week’s CHUM chart (January
13th, 1964) had “Louie Louie” still number 1, but this song was now number
2 and gaining fast.

Finally, on the chart dated January 20th, 1964, after 7 long weeks, the
song achieved the ultimate success…the top spot on the CHUM chart. It
remained number 1 for the next 3 weeks and was only replaced by another
hit from this very same group.

By now, you’ve most likely guessed that we’re talking about The Beatles.
The song, by the way, was “She Loves You”.

The Beatles was a band that Capitol Records Canada A&R head (Artists &
Repertoire) Paul White had been trying to promote to Canadian radio
stations for almost the entire year of ‘63 with very little success. White
remembered The Beatles initial Canadian chart struggle for Piers Hemmingsen’s excellent website,
capitol6000.com:

“In early 1963, I received a copy of The Beatles single “Love Me Do”. I
liked the group’s fresh new sound and released the song on February
18,1963. I followed it up with “Please Please Me” [released on April 1st,
1963] and “From Me To You” [released on June 17th, 1963], but sales on all
three were low and our Canadian President started to question The Beatles
saleability. I persisted and the next single, “She Loves You” [released on
September 16th, 1963] landed on every major Canadian radio chart, becoming
a huge seller and taking the previous three releases along with it, so all
four hit the charts and justified my faith.”

In actual fact, when “Love Me Do“ was initially released by Capitol
Canada, it sold only 170 copies. “Please Please Me” sold slightly better
at around 280 copies.

When “She Loves You” eventually hit number 1 on CHUM on January 20th, the
number 2 song was The Beatles cover version of the Chuck Berry song “Roll
Over Beethoven”. The groups’ latest release, “I Want To Hold Your Hand”
had its debut at number 40 on that same chart.

On the following week’s chart, dated January 27th, The Beatles had 3 songs
in the Top Ten, “She Loves You” was still number 1, “Roll Over Beethoven”
had dropped to number 3 and “I Want to Hold Your Hand” was number 7 (it
was also the CHUMdinger for the week having made the biggest jump from
number 40 to number 7).

The Beatles CHUM chart success culminated during the week of March 23rd,
1964. Eight of their hits were in the Top Ten, including their double
sided number 1, “All My Loving’/”This Boy”, along with another double
sided Beatles smash “I Want To Hold Your Hand”/”I Saw Her Standing There”
at number 2. Plus “She Loves You” was number 3, “Please Please Me” and
“Love Me Do” were numbers 7 and 8 respectively, with “From Me To You”
rounding out the chart domination at number 10.

But that wasn’t all! On that same March CHUM chart, The Beatles latest
single, “Can’t Buy Me Love” debuted at # 14. It was the 5th CHUMdinger for
the lads from Liverpool since December ‘63.

But just playing and charting The Beatles hits wasn’t enough for CHUM.

The station embraced Beatlemania with everything they had.

The CHUM DJ’s became the CHUM Cheatles.

CHUM even bought a package of Beatles sound-alike station jingles from
PAMS of Dallas and ran them several times an hour. CHUM often obtained an
advance copy of any new Beatles single (much to the chagrin of the
competition) and all of the CHUM board operators (of which I was one at
that time) were instructed to insert a cart with a whispered ‘A CHUM
Exclusive!’ over top of the song several times to prohibit other stations
from taping it off air and playing it themselves.

CHUM quickly became THE Beatles station for Southern Ontario and always
had the jump on Beatle news long before any other Top 40 station in the
Toronto area.

How?

Well, one reason was because in December of ’63, a Scarborough high school
student named Trudy Medcalf became CHUM’s newest on-air personality.

So who was Trudy?

Trudy had been to England earlier in 1963 and had seen The Beatles live.
She wrote to the official British Beatles Fan Club to ask if she could
start one in Canada. They gave their permission and Trudy became the
President of the Ontario Beatles Fan Club.

Trudy was an enthusiastic ambassador for The Beatles on CHUM with a daily
show with evening DJ Dave Johnson. Trudy had come to CHUM for help with
the fan club as she couldn’t afford to handle the rapidly growing
membership.

CHUM happily got involved.

Every day after school, Trudy was picked up by taxi and driven to CHUM.
She recorded her daily program with Dave Johnson, then a cab drove her
home. For the Fan Club, Trudy wrote the weekly Beatles newsletter and
brought it with her to the station once a week. CHUM mimeographed the
hundreds, then thousands of copies needed and paid for all of the
envelopes and postage. At its peak, Trudy’s Beatles Fan Club had over
100,000 enthusiastic members.

When The Beatles arrived in New York for their first appearance on the
Ed
Sullivan Show in February of 1964, CHUM paid for Trudy, her Fan Club Vice
President (and Scarborough neighbour) Dawn Hester as well as Trudy’s
father to fly to New York to meet The Beatles. When he was first
introduced to Trudy, John Lennon bowed in appreciation. That’s how much
the Fan Club meant to ‘the boys’ in the early days of Beatlemania.

And of course, on August 16th, 1964 when The Beatles were in Toronto for
two concerts at Maple Leaf Gardens…Trudy was there.

And so was CHUM. Left to right in the photo below are CHUM Program
Director Allan Slaight, newsman (and fill-in DJ) J.J. Richards,
Paul
McCartney and Dave Johnson.

Throughout 1964, ’65 and ’66, CHUM continued to dominate the market with
the most up-to-date Beatles music and news. One day, during the early
summer of ’64, a young man named John Horan, who was originally from
Liverpool and now lived in Toronto, walked into CHUM and walked out with
his own weekly show, “The Liverpool School”. John played the latest
‘British Invasion’ hits while updating CHUM listeners with the latest news
from ‘jolly old’ England.

Fast forward a few years to 1970. CHUM’s latest competition, Foster
Hewitt’sCKFH had bought the Toronto rights to Bill Drake’s ‘History of
Rock and Roll”. Drake was the architect of ‘Boss Radio’ in Los Angeles at
KHJ that had seen that station climb to number one in the ratings in less
than 3 months and the Drake format of ‘less talk, more music’ was adopted
by hundreds of radio stations across North America.

To counter program CKFH, CHUM’s Program Director J. Robert Wood decided
that CHUM would create a 12-hour music documentary to be called “The Story
of The Beatles”.

We had less than two weeks to create those 12 hours…from scratch. At that
time, there were very few books available for research on The Beatles. The
only two that I can recall were Hunter Davies' official biography of
The
Beatles and manager Brian Epstein’s “A Cellarful of Noise”. We somehow (I
didn’t ask questions) obtained quite a few Beatles interview tapes from
CFOX Montreal, who had a British DJ named Roger Scott. Through
CHUM’s
reputation and clout, we managed to obtain phone interviews with Ed
Sullivan, Vidal Sassoon (to discuss the British fashion and social scene),
Chicago DJ Dick Biondi, radio newsman Larry Kane who toured with The
Beatles in 1964 and ’65 as well as one fourth of the Fab Four…Ringo Starr
himself!

The timing for the program was perfect. The Beatles had announced that
they were taking a break from each other. The official break-up didn’t
come until the following year, 1971. CHUM wordsmith extraordinaire
Bill
McDonald wrote the script, Chuck Dann aka Chuck Riley (from
WIBC
Indianapolis) flew into town to narrate it over a weekend and Warren Cosford and I produced it.

“The Story of The Beatles” aired twice on CHUM (thanks to many requests
from the listeners) and was syndicated to any other radio station in the
world who asked for it (the only cost was for the 12 reels of tape it took
to dub the program).

The Beatles once again helped CHUM score in the ratings.

Now we jump ahead 21 years to June of 1991.
Paul McCartney
was in Toronto and staying at the
Sutton Place
hotel at the corner of Wellesley and Bay Streets. Everyone and I mean
everyone from
CTV,
CBC,
national newspapers, American broadcasters, everyone had to come to
Sutton Place
to interview Paul.

Except for CHUM. His publicist mentioned that CHUM radio would, like an
interview. Paul replied, “I’ll go to CHUM.”

Paul McCartney remembered.

True to his word, Paul came to 1331 Yonge. While at CHUM, Paul was
interviewed for CHUM-FM’s ‘In Toronto” program by newsman Scott Robbins
and spent almost half an hour on-the-air in the 1050 CHUM control room
with DJ Dan Michaels.

After the interviews were completed, but before Paul left the building,
CHUM’s General Manager Jim Waters presented him with an enlarged copy of
legendary Toronto photographer John Rowland’s classic photo of the 1965
Beatles Toronto press conference with the CHUM microphone right in front
of Paul.

CHUM and The Beatles began their epic journey together in Toronto in late
1963. That relationship solidified in 1964, ‘65 and ‘66 and continued
through 1993 and well into the 2000’s until CHUM no longer played music.